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As the largest city in the United States, New York City also has the largest mun­icipal police force. With as many as 4,000 recruits annually, 36,000 police officers and 15,500 civilian employees, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) needs a place to train recruits and provide ongoing programs to its civilian staff and active officers. In 2013, “New York’s Finest” will have the state-of-the-art facility it deserves.

Currently, NYPD’s academic and train­ing facilities are spread throughout the city – the main police academy is in Manhattan while emergency and fire­arms training take place in the Bronx and Brooklyn, for example. Addition­ally, the current police academy structure was built more than 40 years ago, and was designed to meet the needs of a much smaller, substantially male de­partment, according to the New York City Department of Design and Con­struc­tion (DDC).

The new academy being constructed in College Point, Queens, however, will have the size and resources necessary to meet the needs of the NYPD, and eventually provide advanced instruction to other law enforcement agencies in the United States and around the world.

“The new facility will be able to provide comprehensive training for all of the NYPD’s needs,” says Michael Plottel, project executive with DDC and project manager for the police academy project. “It will be a great addition to the city.”

The project is being managed by the DDC and the NYPD’s steering committee, which is chaired by Deputy Comm­issioner Michael J. Farrell. NYPD is represented on the project by Capital Con­struction Unit members Philip Heller and Jose Paredes, as well as Office of Management Anal­ysis and Planning In­spector Terrence Riley.

In Sequence

The new police academy will be located on a 35-acre site that, until construction began, was the NYPD’s location for towed vehicles and fleet services. The construction will cover 730,000 interior square feet and 200,000 exterior square feet, and the development will make use of the site’s entire footprint. The project broke ground in December 2009 and is being built in sequences. The total project cost for the first sequence is expected to be about $750 million.

Scheduled for completion in Decem­ber 2013, the first sequence involves redevelopment of the site and construction of the academic building, physical training facility, administrative offices, central utility plant, field house, running track and a garage for 1,000 vehicles. When completed, NYPD says, the new academy will be able to train up to 2,000 recruits at any given time.

“The physical training facility will have a track and various gyms for police tactical training, like baton use, handcuffs and martial arts, in addition to more conventional physical conditioning,” Plottel says. “The first sequence also will have a pool, locker rooms and a dining hall. All recruits go through a basic course with six months of training, so the first sequence will meet those needs.”

The first sequence will involve the core of the entire project, and the second and third sequences will be constructed when funding is available. “The next sequences will have more academic and instruction areas, as well as a tactical village to simulate situations in the five boroughs and at a subway station, and a driver training course,” he says.

A joint venture between Turner Con­struction Co. and STV Inc. – both based in New York – is providing construction management/build services for the first sequence under a $650 million contract. STV/Turner’s services include campus development, technical problem-solving, financial management, contract administration and project controls.

Both Turner and STV have worked in the New York construction market for many years, and Turner/STV is an ongoing consultant to DDC, Plottel says. “The project was competitively awarded via a two-stage RFP process,” he notes.

Coordination and Cooperation

With a project of this size, it’s no surprise that there have been challenges in getting it started. Former New York Mayor Edward Koch proposed the NYPD build a new academy in 1989 and Mayor David Dinkins un­veiled a model for the new academy in the early ‘90s, but Mayor Rudolph Giul­iani eliminated the project’s funding in 1995. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was eager for the project to move forward, but the down economy delayed the plans again.

“With the bad economy, there were significant funding cuts for all the city agencies,” Plottel explains. “The master plan was almost completed when the recession hit, so we had to go back and reevaluate what we needed.”

Now that the project is under way, the site has provided a few challenges, as well. The location is on LaGuardia Air­port’s flight path, so strict height restrictions are in place. The site also “is reclaimed marshland,” he says, which is not the ideal base for construction. Even so, work is progressing at a steady pace.

“We had good geotechnical information from the beginning and we knew it was marshland, so we knew what we were getting into,” says Philip Heller of NYPD’s Capital Construction Unit. “We are doing the pile driving right now, and there have been no major surprises.”

An integrated project management approach has helped expedite the work, Heller and Plottel agree, as well as the use of BIM technology. STV/Turner has co-located on the site with representatives from all major design disciplines and project stake­holders, which encourages ongoing communication.

“The design process and overall project is moving faster because everyone is working closely together,” Plottel says. “This project falls under the jurisdiction of a lot of city agencies, which has the potential to cause delays. But with integrated project management, there is more on-board review of the plans, cooperation with the various stakeholders and everything is more streamlined.”

He explains that the use of BIM further streamlined the project. “BIM has really helped us plan and coordinate all of the work,” he stresses. “It helped us to bid and schedule the project precisely, and pushed the precise coordination of all of the building’s systems. Most importantly, BIM has aligned the DDC, NYPD, design and construction teams.”

‘Great Results’

The project team is pleased with the project’s progression thus far. Site mobilization is complete and the pile driving is about 75 percent finished, and the team has started installing the foundations, Plottel says. The temporary electrical systems are going in and the main MEP equipment has been bought, while the major MEP contracts are out to bid and the steel contract was awarded recently. The team expects the pile driving to be completed this summer, the steel work to be started in the fall and the concrete to continue in the winter. The curtainwall will start in spring 2012, which is when the MEP systems will be installed.

There is still significant work to be done, but the team is proud of where it is currently. “This project is unique for the city and the police department be­cause it is so large – NYPD hasn’t experienced a project of this size in this generation,” Heller explains.

As the project progresses, DDC and NYPD are confident BIM will remain an important tool, Plottel adds.

“We are definitely going to use BIM for future projects because it has yielded such great results so far,” he says. “We first used it as for design visualization and integration and then as a construction bidding, coordination and planning tool.  We hope to apply it to facility management – it has been a big leap for a lot of people to see all that the technology can do. It’s such a great tool that we want to make the best use of it, and we are excited about everything it has helped us accomplish so far.”

Heller added, “As we build out the rest of the campus, we will be able to apply the lessons we’ve learned from the first sequence of work.”